


The Pen is Mighty

by Cloudy_Serendipity



Series: Muscle Memory [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, POV Bucky Barnes, POV First Person, POV Male Character, Survivors Guilt, Therapy, bucky writes a letter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 08:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19247350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudy_Serendipity/pseuds/Cloudy_Serendipity
Summary: Bucky goes to therapy where his shrink encourages him to write a letter to help acknowledge and sort his emotions and thoughts.  Needless to say it's a little difficult for him but in the end he makes progress.





	The Pen is Mighty

**Author's Note:**

> Moody and broody Bucky progressing to slightly less broody Bucky by the end. There's still a lot of self-loathing in here but he's really trying bless him.

Sunlight permeated through the vertical blinds of Dr Daniel Rodriguez’s office.  It was too bright and cheery for my liking, not very fitting at all for my mood.

I felt like an open wound that had been stuffed with broken glass and salt.  I was a raw nerve, feeling everything and trying to feel nothing.  It was all so impossible.

Dan had helped me get back a lot of my memories from back before HYDRA and the words.  He worked with me all the while I was in Wakanda and was one of The Avengers’ go to emotional support team.  We had weekly sessions but this one was an additional meeting.

Steve had made it clear he would book me in for a session but I had called the shrink myself anyway.

“I want you to write a letter.”  Dan had told me at the beginning of our session.  “It could be to yourself as a way to start forgiving yourself and help sort some of those emotions out.  Or it could be to someone who you maybe want to get some things off your chest to.  No one but you needs to see it if you don’t want to.  One step at a time.  But to acknowledge the things you feel is to take a step in the direction of a solution.”

 

So there I sat, at the table in the too bright therapy room, with a pen and an empty page in front of me.

What do I say?  I needed to apologise for starters, but how.

_Just write anything.  Unburden your brain._

Ok, here goes.

 

 

~~Dear Dr Edwards,~~

~~I’m writing to you because my shrink says it’s a good idea to help me process my trauma and deal with some of the things I been feeling lately.~~

_Nope.  No good._

 

~~Dear Veronica,~~

~~I’m writing to apologise for what I did to you during your assessment.  It was wrong of me to take it too far and I’m sorry that I hurt you.~~

~~I don’t know why you don’t like me but I accept that we’re not going to be friends.  Maybe we could call a truce instead?  I’ve~~

_No good either._

 

Dear Ronny,

There are some things I want to say to you but obviously I don’t know how.  It’s like there’s a knot inside that twists and aches.  I don’t know what it is but it’s not like the ~~trauma stuff~~ PTSD.  I know I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry.  I saw the reports and hate myself for what I did.  ~~You won’t forgive~~   I won’t ask you to forgive me but please know I’m ~~struggling with the guilt~~ deeply sorry.

We don’t really get along and I know that’s my fault.  I only ever seem to break things but I think that’s maybe because I feel like I don’t deserve better.  I know you’ve tried to help me but for whatever reason I was unable to accept it.  I’m sorry for that too.  You don’t owe me anything but I appreciate all the things you have done, with the arm and all that.

~~Look, I’m not very good at~~

~~When we first met, I felt we had a connection but I’m not good for people so I pushed you away~~

~~Tony wants to send me back to Wakanda~~

~~When I overheard you saying to Wanda that you thought we had a connection I was~~

When you told Wanda that you’d studied me, it made me feel angry.  I’d hoped I was ~~more than just a project~~ not just a project.  I’ve been trying to become less subhuman and to be more myself.  It’s taking time.

When you and I met, I wasn’t equipped for the kind of friendship ~~you were offering~~ that we may have had, and now that I am ready it’s too late.  I wish I hadn’t pushed you away.  I wish that I could take it all back but I can’t.  No matter how you feel about me I have to tell you that I don’t hate you, you just make me uneasy.  It’s not your fault, it’s mine.  You’re a strong woman, confident and beautiful. ~~If I'm honest with myself~~    ~~You’re a little intimidating~~. 

I can honestly say that I don’t dislike you, if anything it’s the opposite.  I like you ~~a lot~~ and that is something I shouldn’t feel.  Everyone tells me that I deserve happiness but I don’t see it that way, I guess that’s why I pushed you away, because I was scared that you could give me that but ~~I thought maybe you wouldn’t feel the same~~ I don’t know if I’m worth all of that.

 

_Nope.  Can’t do this._

I scrunched the letter up and tossed it in the waste basket.

 

~~Dear Tony,~~

~~There are no words in any language that are good enough to say how sorry I am for~~

 

_Ahh fuck!_

I scrunched that one up too and it joined the first in the trash.

 

 

Dear Bucky,

~~You’re an asshat.~~

~~Pull yourself together.  You’ve got a great chance of getting your life back together and if you can’t get a grip on yourself you’re going to fuck it up like everything else.~~

~~You were a victim of some~~

~~Don’t get stuck in your own head~~

Listen, punk.  You’ve been through some tough times.  You’ve known torment far worse than most and you survived.  You came through the other side, not without scars, but you made it through.  ~~You’re stronger than this but not just that~~

It’s ok to be vulnerable.  It’s ok to hurt.  There’s no weakness in accepting help or asking for it.  There’s no weakness in saying that you’re a victim.  There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging things were out of your control, and accepting that they happened.  They weren’t your fault ~~and you should forgive yourself~~.

You’re not alone and you don’t have to pretend like you want to be alone.  Don’t be afraid to let people in.  Don’t be afraid to cry.  Don’t be afraid of yourself, you’re not a monster.  Every day you spend crippled by your fear is another day that they win.  Don’t let them win.

No matter what you’ve done in their name, you didn’t choose it.  No matter how they broke you, it didn’t end you.  No matter how you feel about yourself, it doesn’t have to be that way.  ~~You deserve~~

If I could give you 1 piece of advice it would be this:  Forgive yourself.  Choose happiness because you deserve something good in your life.

And for everything you think you’ve done wrong… I forgive you.

Sincerely yours,

A friend.

 

I wrote as if I was giving advice to Steve if he’d have been in my shoes.  It was oddly liberating, thinking of my situation from the outside.  I’d never really thought about it like that before, and how it would feel to watch my best friend go through all of this fucked up shit.

My eyes stung with withheld tears and my chest burned.  It could have been indigestion I suppose but…

 _Quit the jokes._   I told myself sternly.

It hurt.  That was the bottom line.  And everyone around me had a little share in that hurt.  Watching from the sidelines was in no way the same as living it but if anyone understood what I was going through it was the people here at Avengers central.  The collective trauma here in this compound was staggering.  My own adding significantly to the substantial pile of baggage that these guys left at the door.  Except I carried mine with me like a fucking pack mule.

The fear would probably always still be there but I could work on it.  Take steps.

“How’s it going?”  Dan had returned with two cups of black coffee.

“Alright, I guess.”  I waved the paper in front of me.  “I wrote stuff.”

He laughed; a quick and light chuckle.  “That’s good.”  He set a cup down on the table by my hand.  “If and when you’re ready to share it you go ahead and let me know.”

“Knock yourself out, man.”  I slid the page over.

He read slowly, pausing over some of the words, then he smiled big.  “Oh we’re forgiving poor old Bucky now are we?”

I knew he was trying to lighten the mood a little, and it kinda worked, making me less self-conscious.  I nodded, giving a slight thin-lipped smile.

“Good.”  Dan clapped his hand on my shoulder, giving me a reassuring squeeze.  “I think it’s about time he at least told himself it was possible.” 

 

I can’t say that I felt unburdened but, having wrote a few things down and started thinking about them less abjectly, it at least gave names to some of the things I felt.   Most of it was guilt.  That one was easy.  But there were others in there that I was unused to feeling, ones that had almost been tortured out of me by HYDRA.  My friendship with Steve bridged the two lives I had occupied and rooted him in the one I had now.  The other Avengers, I had a kind of camaraderie with that was reminiscent of my days with the howling commandos; it was something I could draw on.  But the other feelings, they were corrupted by the emotional poison the HYDRA conditioning left behind.

Realising that made me think that maybe the negative feelings I felt about the good Dr Edwards hadn’t started off like that.  Not Like my friendship with Steve but something a lot more dangerous.  I liked her.  I could say that with confidence now I’d been able to label that uneasy feeling as fondness.  It was something that would leave me vulnerable, so I’d dealt with it the only way I knew how; I’d shut it down and treated it with hostility.  Truly a soldier inside, I’d protected myself against that perceived weakness.

It might be too late to change any of that but it wasn’t too late to try not to make it any worse.  I would talk to Veronica, soon.  But for now my courage against the inner darkness was waning, I was just about done pushing the boundaries of my emotional analysis for one day.

 

There were a few more minutes left in my session with Dan.  He talked about how terrible my handwriting was for someone who went to school in the thirties while I sipped the hot coffee and watched the sunlight through the blinds.  It warmed a little spot somewhere inside that I had forgot existed.  Maybe I’d go sit on the roof later and get some sun.  It looked like it was going to be a decent day after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a bit of a weird one for me as I've never tried using a letter as a chapter or series part before. Hopefully it wasn't horrific.
> 
> I wanted to show how some of Bucky's thoughts changed as he progressed through the exercise. The way he moved on a little from blaming himself to acceptance, how he started to acknowledge his real feelings for Veronica and how he progressed through the stages using different names for her.
> 
> This part of the series helps tie the rest together a bit so we can see he's moving past his guilt more and more, but he's still got some hurting to do ;)


End file.
